Verdon> There is no need to get rid of money, there is only need to
Verdon> provide better access to it (in its function as a mean of
Verdon> exchange) as the result of the aggregated subjective
Verdon> perception of the value of individual and group contribution
Verdon> (as opposed to need to sell our labour to a particular
Verdon> employer).
I'm not sure I understand this. It sounds a bit like the outcome of
face to face negotiation in the better class of 19th c. or 1960s
communes.
Verdon> That is to add information to the bits that represent
Verdon> money/value. Creating smart money. So that not only is
Verdon> subjective perception of value scored by all, but extra
Verdon> information is added on. So for instance should a dollar
Verdon> earned speculating on millions of dollars on the stock market
Verdon> actually be worth the same as a dollar earned digging a ditch,
Verdon> or teaching a child?
On a large scale, who is to have (so to speak) franking privileges to
set those meta-bits?
Moreover, this seems to defeat two of the most basic qualities of
money, first that it is fungible and second that it allows a
single-valued measure of almost everything.
On a small and private scale, I can refuse to accept money from
someone I think is a scumbag -- his dollars aren't *totally* fungible.
On a large scale, that's perhaps possible but fraught with risks such
as potential discrimination suits. A business may be able to
discourage a "toxic customer" who costs it more in free advice,
support, returns etc. that it makes on a sale but it can't mark his
money as of less value than mine. If that were possible, well, um,
would his money still be, you know, money?
I'm quite in agreement that money doesn't fully capture value. If
I've spent 40 years carefully nurturing what is now a spectacular shade
tree and someone wantonly cuts it down, the value I lose is a big
piece of my life and the privilege of sitting under it in my waning
years. But the most I can recover is likely to be the value of the
boards made from it and the reduction in market value, if any, of my
real estate. That isn't right but it's dictated by the notion of
money and its reduction of everything to a single market value. In
the past, there was a notion of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a
tooth, based on an assumption that the common human condition
established similar values for my eye and yours. How will we make
smart money compensate me for the obviously non-pecuniary value of a
tree or eye and extract a matching value from the aggressor?
Verdon> Furthermore, there need not be only one currency, what there
Verdon> needs to be is a standard way for currency exchange. In this
Verdon> way, my Canadian Tire money, my Ithica dollars, my air mile
Verdon> points, all become exchangable currency because as bits they
Verdon> can carry contextual descriptors and meta or semantic
Verdon> information allowing equivalencies to be established (or
Verdon> translated).
That brings to mind some conversations I've had that may be a bit of a
digression. A friend visited Newfoundland in the 70s and stopped to
buy some cold drinks and a tiny village store. For his $20 bill, they
gave him in change some coins, some Canadian Tire "money" at face
value and a candy bar. So there's an exchange rate of some sort.
But these corporate tokens -- in Canada, Canadian Tire "money" most
notably -- aren't money and are hedged about with fine print
restrictions that make it clear that they exist solely for the benefit
of the issuer. When you buy something for $100 at Canadian Tire, they
deliver an item that they can profitably sell you for $97 and require
you to give them a no-interest loan of $3 which will only be repaid in
merchandise and upon making them a further loan. I'd be keen to know
just how much outstanding Canadian Tire money there is at any one time
and how much of it CTC reckons will never be returned. This is no
model for real money, notwithstanding the trust (mis)placed in it by a
rural Newfoundland community where, presumably, there is a shortage of
Canadian currency.
I have a hard time with the notion of local currency. I sounds great
but it depends, AFAICS, on the stability of the issuer (if there is a
unitary issuer) and trust. There are a dozen people or perhaps two
within an hour's drive that I strongly trust and, if we -- they -- all
shared a commitment to the notion of local currency, similar
expectations and similar ethics, I suppose we could do it. But there
are very many people in that range that I don't trust on general
principles or have learned not to trust from experience. I can't
imagine a local currency for, say the county of circa 40,000, yet that
level of inclusiveness would be necessary to make available the goods
and services I would want to buy with it.
Bruce Sterling's novel _Distraction_ explores the matter of trust
within communities in a near and not quite Blade Runner future. In
some of the book's instances you might even say that trust *is*
currency of a decentralized sort. It all works. Kind of. But it's
not stable, it's not secure and it's not for the faint of heart.
Things are inevitably destabilized by personal idiosyncrasy,
individual needs, remote and uncontrollable events and occasional
madness.
There is an interesting pathological, in vitro thing that happens with
mitochondria under certain conditions. The oxidative phosphorylation
process -- production of useful energy for the parent cell and
organism -- becomes uncoupled from the sugar metabolism process that
normally drives it. It's a very inexact metaphor but I think that
finance -- the management of money, presumably as a service for those
who use money -- has become uncoupled from the the elementary needs
and values of the population at large, from the lives of ordinary
people who want simply to use money as a medium of exchange. Finance
now serves a minority composed chiefly of corporate entities including
financial institutions and those few folks whose array of $bits is
large enough to have some influence. The ordinary use of money to buy
broccoli or bolts or kerosene still trundles along but its connection
to the financial side is disrupted and mediated chiefly by consumer
purchasing. Control of the financial landscape on which everything
happens remains chiefly on the side of banks and other large corporate
and financial entities.
This is, like the mitochondrial metaphor, pathological and not
conducive to the well-being of the mitochondria -- the economy -- nor
the health of the cells which the mitochondria supply with high-energy
phosphate -- society at large.
I think I feel a rant coming on so I guess I'll stop here. :-)
- Mike
--
Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada .~.
/V\
[EMAIL PROTECTED] /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/ ^^-^^
_______________________________________________
Futurework mailing list
Futurework@fes.uwaterloo.ca
http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
